An eventful news year could boost subscriber engagement and retention for news publishers in 2024, even if it doesn’t drive conversion spikes like the ones seen in 2016 and 2020.
An uptick in retention could translate to healthy year-over-year subscription revenue growth for some publishers, but the question then becomes whether deferred churn will catch up to them heading into 2025 -- and what they can do to mitigate it.
Toolkits spoke with a range of news and politics publishers and the majority believe election bumps and conversion spikes driven by news events are largely a thing of the past. As the market for news subscriptions matures, the “low-hanging fruit” of highly engaged news consumers has largely been harvested, publishers say.
"We’re not expecting a significant increase in conversions this time around,” said the chief executive of a U.S.-based politics publication.